This past week-end we held our 5th annual Strawberry Celebration. It was a great success despite the on and off rain showers! Thanks to everyone who came out and enjoyed the festivities with us.

The one thing that I just can’t get off of my mind from the week-end is the FANTASTIC pound cake provided to us by Cards Bakery. It is the BEST I have ever had and the perfect thing for making strawberry shortcake. Cards Bakery has always been generous in donating tea biscuts to our festival which are the perfect holder for Mrs. Paddle’s strawberry jam but, this year, for me, it was the pound cake that stole the show!

Tea biscuts and pound cake for the festival provided by CARDS BAKERY.

You can find many a strawberry treat at the bakery these days as we have been supplying them with fresh strawberries since around Father’s Day. Cards is a place that feels and smells like home baking as soon as you walk in the door.  Now run by a third generation, Jen Moon the owner, has kept her grandmother’s tradition alive. Jen has shared with us that she remembers her grandmother picking fresh strawberries at Paulridge Berry Farm for use in her baking and I think that it is really neat that Jen now uses Fruition Berry Farm strawberries at her bakery!

Thanks Jen, we hope that we can continue our family traditions for years to come!

Look at those strawberries!

Kids enjoying Morphy the giant caterpillar.

Free samples of some tasty treats made with strawberries.

Face painting

Wagon rides to the field.Some of our great staff members pausing for a photo.

Some happy pickers waiting for a wagon ride.

Roger James performing for a wagon load of eager pickers.

  What a blast….day two tomorrow!

It’s always very exciting to us when we get to see our name in a newspaper, hear our name on the radio or even better yet see ourselves on T.V. and that is exactly what happened today!

The lovely Melissa Duggan from our local CKWS television station came to the farm on Monday and taped a segment…and tonight it came to Fruition! (sorry I couldn’t help that one) It was so exciting! Ken got to talk about the strawberries and the farm and our good friend Jill (a.k.a Martha) was able to demonstrate some of her yummy recipes. You can find her recipes for strawberry tarts, strawberry smoothies and strawberry cream cheese icing on our recipe page.

You can check the segment here by clicking on WEDNESDAY and then the Newswatch at 5:30 for June 22, 2011.

We are so thankful to have such great opportunities for the farm and such wonderful people to help us make them happen. I always feel that by the time we finally get everyone to realize that strawberry season is here…..it’s just about over!

Customers are always asking me “which is the sweetest”, “which is the best”, “which one works well for preserving”, “are big ones or small ones better”…and the truth is I don’t know!

Well actually, I just think that everyone has there own opinions and should follow them! I often feel like I am on trial to tell customers what they expect to hear which is a clear verdict on any given strawberry. I can’t tell someone to like an Empire apple more than a Macintosh, so I am also reluctant to offer my advice on strawberries. Therefore I usually just tell people to simply have a taste and see what they think.

I am always faced with the same dilemma when it comes to raspberry season as we grow both purple and red varieties. Some people swear that a raspberry is not a raspberry if it is not red and then, there are the die hard purple fans. (Personally I think that they both have their own merits. The purple being more mellow and larger in size and the red having the traditional perfect balance between sweet and tangy)

Next, we get into looks. There is always the size issue…big or small? There are so many factors that come in to play each year as well, the weather the soil and even the variety….once again a simple taste test is sure to tell you what you need to know.

You must remember that these are real strawberries, not those pre-packaged, hard as rock, picked before they are ripe things that you buy in most large grocery stores! Our berries are picked as they become ripe and so they come in all shapes and sizes. Typically the first picking through a patch yields the largest berries (aka the king berry) and they get smaller as the next batch ripen and so on. Strawberries always require water to size so weather can have an impact here as well as soil condition and pollination…I could go on. We have had many double and funny shaped strawberries in our earlier varieties this year and Ken thinks that this is due to all of the rain we had earlier this spring which might have caused some pollination problems. They still taste wonderful to me!

I guess the main thing that I have learned in my six years of producing strawberries for the public is that everyone has their own opinion and who am I to tell them what to think!

We have week one under our belt! I was not sure that we had enough berries to open with on Monday, but the days have been really warm and the berries have been ripening under our noses! There is definitely no shortage now!  Today was actually the ideal strawberry weather day (a little overcast) and we were happy to have a break from the hot sun!

Isn’t it just like farmers to always talk about the weather! We’re never satisfied! Ken actually turned on the irrigation the evening before last because the fields were pretty dry. I always think it’s kind of pretty:

Watering the strawberries!

I’m actually excited because I know that we are going to have some of the nicest picking this week-end! As Ken and I took our routine evening walk through the fields, we couldn’t help but smile because we saw nothing but big, beautiful, juicy strawberries!

Just look at all those strawberries! You don't have to go far to fill a basket!

Strawberries always need water to get up to size and I think that all of the early spring rain really helped!  Enough about the weather…..hope everyone has a happy Father’s day week-end!

With the HOT weather last week (yes there was even a 30 degree day) the berries are progressing nicely. Usually I train our staff BEFORE the season starts however, we introduced them all to picking berries yesterday and today….and yes the rumors are true, we did have a few (that we picked) for sale!

It took a little while but, look how well our new (and some old) pickers did!

SO because we are ahead of where I thought we would be, we will have our first pick-your-own day of the season tomorrow (June 13th). I’m not sure if I’m ready but the berries that I tasted today are so sweet and so good that we just can’t wait any longer. I want to stress that the picking is very LIGHT yet….so for all the large batch preservers out there, please wait until at least the 20th or so for some really heavy duty picking.

Here is what the field we are picking in looks like today!

We will play it by ear for the rest of the week. The berries will typically ripen faster on hot sunny days then overcast rainy ones so we will see what this week brings! Hope to see you all soon!

After a quick walk through the fields this morning, I would say that we are about 10-14 days away from opening for strawberries! Check back, but if all goes well and mother nature stays calm we’ll all be enjoying strawberry shortcake soon!

The arrival of sun this week has brought smiles to our faces and some work is getting done. We’re finally planting those pumpkins!

Grant "helping" Ken plant the pumpkins.

Although we were not loving all of the rain last week, the strawberries are pretty happy…Grant, Lilly and I have been out in the fields doing some weeding and Grant keeps saying “Look mom, baby strawberries!”. He’s right, some of the earlier varieties are starting to grow little green berries!

Notice the little green berry in the middle of the picture!

We also did something last week that I have wanted to do since the first year…we planted some rhubarb! Is there anything better than the combination of strawberries and rhubarb? I’m already dreaming of pies! There is a great looking recipe that I’m dying to try at this link:
http://www.foodess.com/2009/04/strawberry-rhubarb-pie/

Rhubarb waiting to be planted.

Some of the funnier moments last week came as a result of us trying to forge ahead despite of the weather. It seemed a little ironic to be putting irrigation pipes out in the rain! I think that our employees have taken home most of our soil on their boots and their mothers are probably quiet upset with having to put their muddy clothes through the washing machines! We have to laugh about something!

Irrigation pipe as far as the eye can see!

A week or so ago Bob, the bee keeper, asked us to leave the dandelions in the parking lot un-cut as long as we could because there wasn’t much else for the bees to feed on. Yesterday as I was going by the bee hives I saw this beautiful old apple tree in blossom right over the hives. I know they’ll be happy now!

We had a few days of nice weather in a row that enabled us to get the new strawberries planted. Thank goodness! I wasn’t sure that the rain would ever stop but, it actually worked out perfectly raining through the night the day we got our last acre planted!

Ruth, Grant, Lilly and I on the strawberry planter.

This week we are working on getting all of the raspberries tied up so that we can finally cut the grass! The few days of heat that we had combined with all of the rain as made the grass grow at an incredible rate. I always think that we have more time and then all of a sudden it’s up to our knees!  The weeds will be growing just as quickly as the grass so I know what I’ll be doing this week:)

One of our staff tying up raspberry canes.